Perrine Poetry

While Perrine brings up some good points in his article, I don't agree with everything that he says.  When he initially stated that there were correct and incorrect ways to interpret poetry, I completely disagreed because I believe that everyone has their own opinion about how the poetry could be interpreted.  Then, he gave the example of the thief, and it made me kind of want to agree with him.  I guess some interpretations could be more valid than others, but I think that no one's interpretation is definitely wrong.  Later in the article, Perrine uses the example of the poem by Emily Dickinson to further his point.  I, like others he mentioned in his article, thought that it represented a field of flowers.  Perrine said it represented a sunset and that he was right because his theory satisfied more of the details.  I don't agree with him because I feel that the field of flowers describes the poem just as well as a sunset.

I was also really interested when Perrine discussed the poems by Whitman and Melville.  I thought both of them were talking about an army, but apparently I was wrong.  Perrine stated that Melville's poem was about the stars, and now that he said that, I can really see where he's coming from.  Words like beaming, bright, stream, gleam, twinkling, and shining can all refer to stars and help him justify his interpretation.  Towards the end of the article, Perrine suggests the concepts of symbols.  Once again, he stressed that not all interpretations can be valid but possibly more than one could be.  He also states that symbols can help us figure out what some poetry means as poets often use symbols in their poems to stand for something bigger than the one word they wrote down.  Finally, we must make the best interpretation that we can make that satisfies all of the details and doesn't make too many assumptions.